I hope this brings some measure of peace and closure for his family and friends.
I had to read scores of tech bros in the professional-managerial class whinge about the poor, about black lives matter and how this was due to "progressivism".
Turns out the suspected murderer is a guy who describes himself as an "entrepreneur" on Linkedin and has a Crunchbase listing where he is described as being in executive management. Maybe we should have law enforcement target entrepreneurs as opposed to people made homeless by the enormous wealth disparity on display in San Francisco.
There’s a tiny possibility that feckless bureaucrats, billions of dollars spent with no oversight, mental illness, and drug addiction share just a sliver of the responsibility
>I had to read scores of tech bros [...]
Did you though? I can't recommend enough cutting out reading people's comments that you don't want to read. If other people's comments stress you out and make you angry, there are typically actions you can take to expose yourself less to them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35451394
Another reply - "I'll have you know, my ivory tower is devoid of any riffraff!"
While some, including me, think this drug problem is an example of the hypocrisy of NeoLiberalism...I also think it's a centuries old playbook of wreaking havoc on whole populations of people by introducing vices such as drugs. The Opium Wars & what lead to the Opium Wars is an example.
Side note, I would like there to be a graph based form of communication that can better express the context of statements. It's too easy to take a couple of sentences on a forum out of context.
I remember reading blog after blog on HN about people moving out of SF specifically for what the city had become.
Always important to reflect on whether stances like "SF is degenerating" are based on a rational analysis of what is actually happening, versus a more emotional response to stories that might be more like the topic of this post, just with less visibility into the exact circumstances of what happened.
Not saying that's likely happening here, but the clear response to the original news was that this was the perfect example of what SF is becoming. How often does that assumption happen?
But all the comments, tweets, etc immediately came out blaming SF government and SF's general crime problem specifically for Bob Lee's death. Like they couldn't just wait a teeny bit before forming an opinion after more facts were known? Especially from the crowd that prides itself on "logic" and "data driven" decisions.
You point out the falsity and people call you naive and say it's the crime stats that are wrong, not their take. Their version is reality.
As a San Francisco resident, I don't want us wasting time, energy and resources going after the wrong problems.
https://sfstandard.com/perspectives/perspective-why-your-cha...
It seems equally weird to me that so many people are taking this anecdote as a sort of proof that San Francisco does not have a crime problem.
Focusing on individual anecdotes and swinging from one conclusion to another is the real problem. The source of this unfortunate murder shouldn’t dictate your entire view of a city’s crime problem.
Same here - techies shocked, _shocked_ that one of "their own" could commit a crime like this. Easier for them to talk about crime in general than lay blame at the feet on one of "their own".
Then like you said - the minute I found out he was in crypto I was 100% convinced he was murdered by someone he knew. Not in any conspiracy view like the feds did it because his company was "too dangerous" to FedNow or something. But because a significant portion of people in crypto are unhinged.
I think more generally, people are mob parrots at heart. We go with the crowd. If we see a guy killed and someone yells, "Crime Wave!!!" Well, then we all start chanting "Crime Wave!!!" The average person, even on HN as we saw, can really not be trusted to give dispassionate analysis. In the vast majority of instances, we just parrot whatever narrative or world view we feel most emotionally comfortable with.
I struggle mightily against it and still fall into that cesspool of intellectual laziness from time to time. It's just human. But you're right. We need to do better.
Much better.
In 2011, in incidents of murder for which the relationships of murder victims and offenders were known, 54.3 percent were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.); 24.8 percent of victims were slain by family members. The relationship of murder victims and offenders was unknown in 44.1 percent of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents in 2011.
In short, people were killed by strangers 11.7% of the time. For 88.3% of murders (where the relationship between the killer and the victim was known), it was someone the victim knew.
The statistics are similar for sexual violence.
For juveniles and children who experience sexual violence, it is a family member of acquaintance 93% of the time. This percentage drops for adults to ~80%, i.e. in 80% of cases the victim will know the perpetrator.
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc...
These crimes are very different from a mugging or robbery. It is easy to imagine why if you replay the situation in your mind — looking someone in the eyes as you stab them, up close takes a lot emotionally. It is a very intense situation. Almost everyone — if driven to it — will steal out of desperation and hunger, but very few can look people in the eye, walk up to them and stick a knife in them. There is a strong psychological aversion to hurting other human beings built into most of us and it's what keeps society mostly safe.
(Confirmed with the pie chart in your first link.)
Former fire commissioner, not outside his house (actually a parent's home), and what makes you so sure it was random? A man was arrested for that, who alleges that the victim initiated the confrontation by pepper spraying him. I'm quite interested in that case as I have relevant personal knowledge about people involved, but for that reason I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions about it for now.
Had there not been the entrenched environment of lawlessness in SF the perpetrator would not have even attempted his attack. And had the victim not been a prominent person the SF police would not have bothered to keep looking.
The only mistake the murderer made here is he underestimated the public outcry that forced the police and the DA to keep investigating in fear of theirs and the city's reputation.
Maybe it's time to wake up.
One can only imagine what these two "tech industry" people were arguing about before one killed the other. The media reports make them sound like such wonderfully nice people, drinking and driving around SF at 2am on a Tuesday, one of them liking stay out to the wee hours on weeknights the other liking to keep butterfly and switch blades in his car. One of them apparently believed an "emotional narrative" about SF being in decline; that's allegedly why he moved to Miami.
Here is the Expand IT Inc. website, listing the survivor's colleagues.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230413142515if_/https://www.ex...
All these references to "Cash App" in the articles about this crime yet none explaining its main use has been amongst criminals.
It's doubtful moving to Miami could have much to do with safety as Miami has higher crime rates than SF. More likely the reason was political.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- narrative A (looking "up"): where the upper-class technologists are the reason for the social precarity-based hellscape experienced by the lower-class residents
- narrative B (looking "down"): where the crime of the lower-class is the cause of the fearful crime-based hellscape experienced by the upper-class technologists
The reality is probably a little bit of both. But in typing this, I'm realizing that I should probably try to avoid sensationalizing the topic with references to "hell" (though I realize you were using that phrase to dismantle the sensationalism, not escalate it)
So, the ratio is somewhere between 10% stranger to 90% family and acquaintance and 60% stranger to 40% family and acquaintance.
- 1,622 homicides
- 1,246 where (known vs. stranger) relationships were established
- 354 of that 1,246 attributed to strangers
Today's clearance rate is lower [1], but it's not really apples-to-apples comparison for a lot of reasons relating to recordkeeping conventions. But clearance rate for white homicide victims in NYC is still around ~85%. The past few years, the % of overall victims that were killed by strangers is around 5% [2].
So yes, there is still some uncertainty in the exact ratio of stranger/friend/unknown suspects. But still not rational to automatically assume that Lee was the victim of random crime.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/20/archives/murders-by-stran...
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/crime-without-punishmen...
[2] https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-stranger-o...
IIRC it was at least partly getting lead out of gasoline in the '70s: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evide...
Mission Local seems to serve their local bureaucratic masters over the basic public safety needs of the people. [0]
This is gaslighting. You should be ashamed. [1]
In this case they are “independent” of a sort [2]
In all fairness, he did retweet this article a couple hours ago.
[0] https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644520924828540929?s=20
[1] https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644510807060021249?s=20
[2] https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644535178856124418?s=20
Eskenazi is a well-connected journalist, but he is also arrogant and often presents only one side of issues. For example, virtually nothing that he wrote in this article (anonymously sourced from disgruntled politicians) about the magnet school Lowell High school ended up being true (magnet schools do not violate state code as claimed, and the school did return to test-based admission which he claimed would not happen) https://missionlocal.org/2022/02/lowells-old-merit-based-adm.... So while his reporting is mostly good, you have to be aware of his bias.
Yes, street crime is itself a taking of rights and freedom of the people living and working in a place, and it is more important to contain it than to maximize the criminals' rights.
But this shows that the reputation of the tech industry is pretty much underwater, and premature postings like that don't help.
Lots of little papers like this seem healthy and then unceremoniously go out of business because they don't make enough money in ad revenue to pay their journalists like 45k/yr. That's not a typo: that's how much Bay Area reporters make.
Support local journalism!
Beyond that, it's nor clear to me that revealing the actual name or other personal details of the suspect serves a legitimate purpose of advancing justice or society; however, it is not out of keeping with journalistic practice in other criminal cases in California. Suspects' names get printed in newspapers for far lower profile crimes all the time.
The police arresting people in secret has historically been .. problematic at best.
Jumping to the conclusion that some homeless guy or street thug did it, without any evidence, is also something that people with axes to grind do on a regular basis.
If it's all made up, that would be amazing. Doubtful.
But do I feel less safe? Absolutely not! The neighborhoods (where most people live) are just fine. I regularly walk home from the bars at midnight without a care. It's simply not a problem.
Compare back to the mid-90's, when there was active gun/gang violence in the Mission corridor ... quite frankly, I feel far safer today than I used to.
But if you equate homeless people near me = unsafe, then that's a different discussion.
That‘s not entirely fair.
I don't understand why it has to be "SF is perfectly safe" or "SF is a dystopian hellhole". Why not pick a middle ground?
Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? In SF there are relatively few people walking around strapped. I looked it up, and in my hometown of Louisville, KY (which is no Detroit or Baltimore), there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk?
But also, for what it's worth, I'm a reasonably tall white guy. I think that affects how many unsafe situations I'm likely to encounter A LOT.
San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.
Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San Francisco".
You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the audience
1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.
2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they include suicides, they're not informative.
Because it doesn't particularly matter if you are robbed, hurt, or killed by a gun, knife, bat, or fists.
(And when looking at stats, remember: over half of gun deaths in the U.S. are self-inflicted. Which is still tragic, but different than assault.)
Therefore the need to rely on data to find more objectivity when debating public policies. Yes data can be twisted and most of the time is poorly reported and interpreted by people, but it's better than relying on personal anecdotes.
I'm sure parents with young children or elderly have a different experience but that's not different for any other larger US city.
With this said, the topic of the city turning a blind eye to property crime and "extreme", visible destitution is a whole different story.
Also, we should differentiate between the feeling of comfort / safety (which is what most people care about), and actual crime statistics (which are themselves fraught, I don't think people in SF even report car break-ins these days since the police and justice systems don't work any more).
> Brousseau was walking home from Dolores Park at 8:22 p.m. Friday when 50 to 60 shots were fired at the intersection of Rosa Parks Lane and Guerrero Street, according to San Francisco police. The gunfire left him critically wounded and caused non-life-threatening injuries to an 18-year-old victim https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Twitter-employee-t...
And if you'd rather have the tl;dr version: https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/22-Year-Old-Suff...
Rosa Parks Lane & Guerrero Street is one block away from Valencia Street.
I used to live in the area around the same time. I walked Guerrero frequently to go grocery shopping and get to my gym, usually between 7:00pm and 10:00pm. That easily could have been me. Needless to say I don't live there anymore.
Black Cat, Emperor Norton's, Zombie Village, Bar 888, Tempest, the EndUp...Maybe one reason the "SF is a hellhole" crowd are so negative about this town are because they shut themselves out of so many great places!
I'm very comfortable with cities, but as a visitor to SF seeing someone break into a vehicle on a busy street, 8 pm on a Saturday night is pretty bad.
That sort of crime matters too.
This is simply a narrative that certain people are trying to portray to prove that certain policy doesn’t work. It’s nonsense.
Completely agree, I was downvoted into oblivion last week for claiming it was possibly somebody in his circle rather than a random stanger. The assumptions made about the inhumanity of the homeless/poor is worrying.
I wonder the same about Seattle. How many commenters are speaking from Redmond or Kirkland or Bellevue etc instead of the city?
Meanwhile people with less income are exposed daily to an epidemic of drug addiction, homeless, theft, mental illness, all problems with straightforward solutions that the residents are screaming for.
Its not one or the other, its both. Just because you live in a safe neighborhood does not mean that everyone that doesn’t isn’t being “data driven” or “logical” enough.
It actually says a lot about SF that people would jump to that conclusion. SF is not in a good place. It has deteriorated over the past 2 decades. But it's not why Bob Lee is dead.
His first and only response was "well, how do you know that's even related? Most people get killed by somebody they know." and I was like "well, yeah, but San Francisco is bad right now" and the conversation moved on.
Edit: Added "violent," to preempt diversions about non-violent crimes.
This suspect is innocent until proven guilty and we will all still be here when the trial finishes. There is no reason to rush out to come up with a viewpoint that might be shown false with later revelations. If we've learned something from the people who jumped straight to total confidence that it was caused by homelessness, then let's apply it.
I hope that we can extend the same fundamental legal skepticism to society's most needy.
But it’s not all culture war. I like to think that in HN it’s all legitimate viewpoints.
Not saying that's related, but you would have to investigate that angle in a murder.
It's way more common to ignore/forget/never mention again anything bad someone who died did.
Also the crypto world seems to be getting a bit stabby in various ways, as things come crashing down there may be repercussions. Unlikely in this case, probably. Much more likely to be domestic of some sort.
Source?
But when I suggested it in an earlier thread I was criticized and downvoted for “spreading conspiracy theories.”
I know we shouldn’t speculate but everyone else was speculating that it was random!
There's comments is this thread of amazing journalism but the LLC shows as inactive on the Division of CA website (entity 201008110204) and the Expand IT website itself is dead. For all we know, this is a Lyft or Uber driver. Unless I'm missing some SFPD statement known to the journalist?
EDIT: got an old filling; see njstraub608's comment. My mistake
Could it be an uber driver or lyft driver? Sure. But it seems like someone who has run a consulting business for many years in the tech space.
First, you apparently missed this paragraph:
Rather, Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.
Doesn't sound to me like the reporter is just speculating based on the LinkedIn profile.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure you have the wrong filing. The LinkedIn profile says "Inc", not "LLC", so I think it's probably file #4776106, which is still active, and registered with an address in Emeryville, which is where police were headed to arrest Momeni.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...
The murder rate in San Francisco is preposterously low.
Chicago deals with the same.
I feel pretty confident that some of this is astroturfing from people with political ideologies trying to score points on blue states, but it seems to be quite effective however it is accomplished. People can be quick to scare, and appeals to their sense of personal safety are quite powerful.
The article has a link to a LinkedIn profile. The writer indicates that the name and city of the LI profile matches the information on the person they were "told" was arrested this morning. Even the name of the company of the person indicated is explicitly referenced in the article.
My professional world doesn't allow for ambiguity. As a journalist, how sure do you need to be about the accuracy of this information before going public?
[1] https://somafm.com/scanner/ [2] https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Safety/Police-Department-Incid... [3] https://www.sfsheriff.com/find-person-jail
you're living in the past, my friend. no such professional standard exists today.
https://www.twitter.com/crazybob/status/1181668744247930880/...
Anyways, really sad story, that touched a lot of us close to home. (We still don't know what happened, these are still allegations.)
P.S. The other sad part for me was that passersby sped away instead of helping immediately. Moments count in these cases.
I had family ask me about it, concerned for my welfare, and I told them I was confused why this was getting national media coverage other violent crimes in SF hadn't received, and mentioned my initial thoughts that it might have been motivate by sketchy cryptocurrency crap.
Yet when I saw the popular narrative that it was some random stabbing in SF I didn't really have a reason to doubt it: I've personally been chased by a crazy person with a knife in the city.
Glad they got their man!
The linked article contains the full name, age, and city of residency.
Name, age, city is pretty common; especially name and age of someone arrested. I'd imagine it public records.
Some quick googling for recent examples. I just looked for news articles, not sure what if the police release has more residency info on the ones that aren't listed in the articles.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-17/suspect-... - name and age
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/2-chicago-men-charged-in-d... - names, ages, city
https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-music-shootings-arr... - name and age
And no, BuzzFeed News is as trash as BuzzFeed.
Bob Lee's murder wasn't a random crime. Crime is out of control in SF
Even in SF, murders by strangers are really, really rare.
As Bob Lee was bleeding out, he went to driver for aid who ignored him and fled the scene. Shouldn't they be arrested and charged for failure to render aid? Perhaps he would've had a chance if he had arrived at a trauma ER but it's now an unknowable.
It'll be interesting when more details come out.
All the "SF is going downhill!" stuff that came out... seems pretty irrelevant given this wasn't a random act of violence.
Part of me felt this was personal. A stabbing you have to get fairly close. Bob Lee could know his killer. And I don’t know him well enough to know who he hung out with.
Terrible prediction. This is why I never gamble.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/bob-lee-cash-app-killi...
https://www.ktvu.com/news/what-we-know-about-nima-momeni-sus...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2023/04/13/bob-lee...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/bob-lee-san-francisco...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bob-lee-murder-san-francisco-p...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/04/13/who-is-...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/nima-momeni-san-fr...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/nima...
https://abc7news.com/bob-lee-arrest-nima-momeni-cash-app-fou...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/arrest-in-bob-le...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11969477/San-Franci...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/13/bob-lee-kill...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/13/bob-lee-m...
https://nytimas.com/nima-momeni-5-quick-facts-you-need-to-kn...
https://fortune.com/2023/04/13/san-francisco-police-reported...
More on Block/Cash App:
https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
More on MobileCoin:
https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...
We find the crime narrative so appealing though. It’s those dirty homeless. That’s why crime has gone up (homicides in SF at historic lows). And it’s exceedingly hard to overcome emotionally. I get it. But HN is supposed to be a logical community, not one where emotions are allowed to run rampant.
When I walked up to my car with broken windows, my initial reaction was to blame the homeless guy next to our on the street. But realistically, who would stay by the site of a crime? Maybe that’s what he wanted me to think, but seems unlikely and he was very afraid I’d tear into him about it because that’s probably happened to him more than once in the past. They know how other people look at them and that takes a serious mental toll on you. How could it not if the vast majority of people around you treat you like shit. I had to remember that the factual reporting on the topic seems to point that SF’s car breakins problem is an organized crime. A crime ring the SF police can’t or won’t get a handle on. Maybe an explicit deal to keep homicide rates low? It came out Toronto police had been doing that and following that violent crimes started going up quite rapidly. Drug dealers and organized crime organizations aren’t sleeping on the streets. Heck, I’m pretty sure one tried to approach me to be a mule and he was dressed upscale and definitely not homeless. Most violence is reliably either someone you know or more organized crime (eg gang initiations).
Sure. SF does have a really bad homeless problem. And they do cause problems but it’s mostly around there being messes everywhere which is unpleasant and is uncomfortable being around unpredictable people with mental illnesses. But I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes mostly because of how society treats them, so I at least try to have some compassion and engage with them from time to time. I know how to distinguish discomfort from feeling unsafe. I know logically and factually even crazy people walking around on the street are not going to turn into a problem (I’m surrounded by them daily in the part of the city I live). But it’s still uncomfortable to be around and even my dog is wary of people like that which speaks to the base lizard brain reacting. I accept that’s my reaction but it fundamentally is not the other person’s problem. I’m responsible for my reaction to uncomfortable feelings.
That’s why I made the comment I did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899&p=8#35454676. I’m not surprised I was right. I’m sad at how strong and prevalent the “it’s gotta be the homeless” crowd was, facts be dammed.
People really need to understand homelessness and react to it with compassion rather than treating it like a dirty thing they might infect you with if they come near and the source of societies problems. Homelessness is ultimately a reflection of the failing of our society, not a reflection of the failings of the individuals impacted by it.
PS: the homeless don’t get any protection on the streets from the police. Most homeless crime is homeless on homeless because the police refuse to keep them safe or because the homeless district the police / governments due to repeated cycles of abuse and victimization. Not sure what the story is in SF per se, but I can’t imagine that part is better.
Worth keeping in mind next time something comes along that might confirm your priors.
(Edit: notable that the thread linked above had _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami]. I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? )
I lived in SF for ~15 years, experienced multiple car breakins (when I had a car) and one weird guy who walked up to me on the street and said "I have a gun and I'm going to shoot you" (which I somehow calmly ignored). For the record, I didn't comment in that thread and I generally don't feel the need to bash SF in public - I just simply moved out.
Austin has 2.57 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters per 100K. Same year, SF has 6.35 per 100K. So SF is twice as bad as Austin. Your right about Miami though.
But 6.35 isn't bad. The murder rate in St Louis (for comparision to the US city with the worst) is 66.07 per 100K. And Colima Mexico (worst in the world maybe) is 182 murders per 100K.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
On this list of homicides per capita [1], San Francisco ranks far higher than Austin in incidents per capita of "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter": 2.57 per 100,000 people in Austin, vs. 6.35 per 100,000 in SF.
It also ranks higher than New York, Portland, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
There was a comment that was on that initial thread where the commenter said that they heard from "very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit", and the commenter still went on to blame San Francisco for being a "crime ridden shithole". I responded with this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456746 , it was just bizarre to me.
I hope this news brings his family and friends some closure.
> San Francisco’s other homicide victims in 2023 are Gavin Boston, 40; Irving Sanchez-Morales, 28; Carlos Romero Flores, 29; Maxwell Maltzman, 18; Demario Lockett, 44; Maxwell Mason, 29; Humberto Avila, 46; Gregory McFarland Jr, 36; Kareem Sims, 43; Debra Lynn Hord, 57; and Jermaine Reeves, 52.
SF has 3-5x the property crime of most major cities in the United States. I imagine most violent crime is targeted (i.e. the victim is not a random person walking down the street), but property crime is scary because it can happen to the best of us, our friends and our family, in even the "safest" neighborhoods. We all know friends whose cars have been broken into. And it's easy to imagine --- what if my kids were at home during one of these home break-ins? (Note that burglaries are not classified as violent crime in SF)
Are there forums with better user moderation systems that boost ranking of quality comments and decrease ranking of comment noise? Something where I can systematically increase the ranking of comments of users I respect (or I transitively respect), and decrease the ranking of comments for users that I see write crap. Ideally tagged (e.g. I want to uprank a particular users opinions on programming languages, but I want to strongly downrank their economic opinions)
My guess was drug deal gone wrong. But tech deal gone wrong makes sense too, I guess.
edit: my drug guess was before the person was named, not implying anything, just know drugs are a popular hobby in SF
How is one story really highlighting something? This is just one anecdote where it wasn't what people expected, it's not proof they're wrong.
(I have no idea if they are, it's just a bad argument)
I saw this most extremely during COVID, and I usually hate "both side-ing" things, but I did see this pretty extremely on both sides. "MASKS DON'T WORK!!", "YES THEY DO!!", "IT WAS A LAB LEAK!!", "IT WAS ANIMALS FROM THE WET MARKET!!", "KIDS ARE FINE!!", "KIDS ARE AT SERIOUS RISK!!". It's like at some point I just wanted to scream "Maybe we just don't know yet."
I get a lot out of the things shared here and the discourse, but sometimes we get those threads and I just can't believe so many otherwise smart, intelligent people would believe and say such horrible things.
The only submission about Rob Lee’s death that stayed at the top of the page was one that didn’t mention that he was murdered in the headline, and where dang came in and told everyone to keep politics out of it and avoid flamewar stuff.
People said it was reasonable that people mass flagged any submission that mentioned the murder in its headline, because it was flamewar stuff.
But now we have this submission. I looked through all of the top comments, and they’re _all_ using this to talk about the larger “is San Francisco safe?” debate. About half of them are specifically complaining about other people’s views, including complaining about other Hacker News comments.
The flip side is that people have zero interest in statistics-based discussions. Even supposedly data-driven engineers. If you find that property-crime has increased by X%, of which Y% can be attributed to specific public policy decisions, you will get zero traction if you frame this as a data-driven discussion. People grok stories. They may somewhat understand statistics and numbers, but they don't grok it. Hence why almost all discussions revolve around anecdotes with some statistics provided as supporting evidence.
Ironically, for-profit companies are far better at having data-driven discussions and decisions. I have little hope that this will ever be the case in public discourse.
From the looks of your replies, more than a few are back to comment here to say "Actually I am still right."
Which, frankly, seems to me more evidence I should just not bother to browse threads about this kind of inflammatory subject. Even on HN where discussion quality tends to be better, there's plenty of people who just show up to shout, and not listen.
My first instinct was it was related to tech.
When i heard about it at first i thought maybe it had something to do with MobileCoin… maybe someone lost a lot of money or was afraid to lose market share.
Then when I commented I was really trying to figure out the mechanics of how it went down if it really were a robbery.
You’re doing the same thing in this thread, where the very article we are discussing shows that murders have been on the rise in the past 5 years.
Your comment was good, then you used the edit to spew your confirmation bias.
They caught her because they found traces of fish tank algaecide in the pill bottles. She reused the same mortar and pestle to do both. The local fish supply store had records of her buying the same algaecide.
1. Why was he out by himself? At 2 AM? 2. It didn't seem "random" at all, and in fact seemed like a targeted homicide.
Turns out both of these suspicions were valid. /shrug
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
It would be wrong to insist Chicago doesn't have a problem with violence just because I have much better than Vegas odds of not dying today. SF has different parameter inputs than Chicago, but my point applies.
Many of us mentioned this (I did in my comment), which is why we are so surprised about this murder. Now it makes more sense, although still tragic. We still get to gripe about property crime, which has been higher than average for awhile now and only seems to be getting worse.
So this particular murder was a personal thing, ok.
But that doesnt change the fact crime has gotten worse in SF.
Sure, people were wrong in their assumption that the murder was random. At least that's how it looks now. We haven't heard the suspects side, but....
But wrong that SF has become a dangerous and mismanaged city? Murder isn't the only violent crime and a lot of crime goes unreported. People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". The fact that everyone assumed that Bob Lee was murdered randomly says something about the state of the city.
SF has a lot of issues and it has a lot of crime and other issues. It has been mismanaged for years now and things need to change.
To those of us with mental models constructed from data, this case is proceeding as expected. If Momeni is guilty I hope he admits his guilt.
But that in no way changes the point that SF is a toxic environment. Here's the SF fire commissioner being brained by a violent homeless man this past week...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/video-shows-ex-sf-fire-c...
I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway.
Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it.
I commented below but the IT consulting LLC in the bio is inactive (both in the division of corp website and online). Is that the only evidence here for the statement above?
Tagline is kinda weird... isn't murder kinda indicative of a law enforcement failure?
I assume (and hope) the police have more solid evidence like a fingerprint on that knife or Nima's own blood/DNA at the scene or on the knife as is common with stabbings.
When you put a violent criminal to death, the crime rate is permanently and instantly lowered. If you lock them in a cage for 20 years we all pay the bills and they end up coming out and murdering again on the first day out. Total insanity.
He was in the car with suspect yet he says "someone stabbed me" ??
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cash-app-founder-bob-lee-died-ple...
edit: it still doesn't make sense to me. If someone I know stabs me and I assume I have few minutes to live and call 911, I would say "help, Joe Doe stabbed me". I wouldn't say "someone", because that implies a stranger.
